“Why doesn’t the international community support the fighters of
Palestine?” Iyad Abu Khaizaran asked, sitting in his Gaza apartment.

Abu Khaizaran, 41, was one of 477 detainees freed on 18 October 2011
in the first phase of Hamas’s prisoner
exchange with Israel, and one of 205 banished by Israel from their
homes in the West Bank. Like 163 others, Abu Khaizaran, a native of Tubas, was
forcibly relocated to the Gaza Strip.

Hamas had reached the deal with Israel to free, in two phases, over
a thousand Palestinian prisoners in exchange for an Israeli soldier
they had captured in 2006.

A day before the exchange, two Palestinian human rights
organizations, Addameer
and Al-Haq,
said in a statement that the “terms violate Article 49 of the Fourth
Geneva Convention, which prohibits forcible transfers and
deportations of protected persons, a proscription that is part of
customary international humanitarian law.”

However, Abu Khaizaran was less interested in discussing his own
banishment than the Palestinian struggle. “I had the right to fight
this occupation,” he said. “International law allowed me to do that.”

“I didn’t care about the length of my sentence, or how many years I
would spend inside Israeli jails,” he added. “Our struggle was just.
For this reason, I was never sad during my imprisonment.”

Isolated from family

But the conversation eventually turned to Abu Khaizaran’s detention.
A founder of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad
movement’s armed al-Quds Brigades in Tubas, he was captured by Israeli
soldiers on 3 October 1991 during a an operation against a military
checkpoint. This followed a previous 20-month detention.

“Before I was detained, I was shot and injured by eleven bullets,”
he said. “My condition was very critical.”

Sentenced to a lifetime plus 25 years, he was frequently isolated
from both his family and other detainees. “Once, I didn’t see my family
for four years,” he said. “Sometimes detainees’ families would spend
their whole day in the ‘journey of death,’ only to be turned away at
the gate. The guards did this only for revenge.” This is a reference to
the long, arduous journeys Palestinian family members often must make
to visit imprisoned relatives in Israel.

It was in an isolation cell at Ashkelon prison
that a visiting attorney told him of the mass hunger strike
launched on 27 September last year by Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine leader Ahmad Saadat,
then isolated in Shata prison himself. Abu Khaizaran joined it, never
expecting to be freed only days later in a prisoner exchange.

Victory

“My happiness after the exchange cannot be expressed,” he said. “It
was very high. The exchange was a victory for Palestinians. Israel
didn’t grant it easily.

“The international community never showed any concern for thousands
of Palestinian detainees until [captive Israeli soldier] Gilad Shalit
was captured. And that is a bad comparison. We cannot equate a soldier
who was captured while shooting at civilians with Palestinians
resisting the occupation of their lands. ”

As crowds gathered in the streets of Palestine on the evening of 11
October 2011 to celebrate news of the impending exchange, rumors
swirled it would include Saadat. But a 15 October official list showed
he would stay imprisoned (on the same day as the first stage of the
prisoner release, a deal was reached to end the hunger strike).

Nonetheless, Saadat’s wife Abla has expressed support for the
agreement.

In a message to The Electronic Intifada emailed via the Campaign to
Free Ahmad Sa’adat, Abla said the release was: “an achievement of the
Palestinian resistance and it should be clear that whenever prisoners
are freed, it is always a victory for the prisoners’ steadfastness and
the Palestinian resistance.”

“In the past year — since 18 October and in many ways sparked by the
September-October 2011 hunger strike — the struggle of Palestinian
prisoners within the Zionist jails has escalated dramatically. Our
prisoners have been leading our national movement, with empty stomachs
and full of steadfastness.

“Ahmad was finally released from isolation after over three years,
multiple hunger strikes and lengthy struggle because of the victory of
our prisoners in May of this year, and their united effort,” she added,
referring to a fast undertaken in April and May of this year, that has
become known as the Karameh (Dignity) hunger strike.

To end that strike, as well as the one led by Ahmad Saadat in 2011,
Israel promised to stop its isolation of Palestinian detainees (“Victory on the
way in hunger strike,” Campaign to Free Ahmad Saadat, 18 October
2011). On 14 May this year, it also agreed to release some Palestinians
held in administrative
detention (without charge or trial) and allow visits by
first-degree family members to all prisoners (“Statement
of victory from the strike leadership,” Samidoun, 16 May 2012).

Broken promises

These deals remain unfulfilled, Abla Saadat said. “The heroic
steadfastness of our prisoners confronts an enemy that continues to
isolate Palestinian prisoners like Dirar Abu Sisi
and Awad al-Saidi, continues to attack Palestinian prisoners in their
cells, and continues to kidnap Palestinians from their homes, including
the freed prisoners of 18 October 2011.”

Palestinians detained by Israel following their release in the
exchange include Ayman Sharawna
and Samer
Issawi, both of whom are still on hunger strikes against new
administrative detention orders. Sharawna has been depriving himself of
food for more than 100 days.

Suffering continues

After his release, Abu Khaizaran found himself among the more
isolated of those banished to the Gaza Strip. A longtime Islamic Jihad
member, he had left the organization and was politically independent by
2011. While he, like other freed detainees, received relocation and
financial assistance from the Palestinian administrations in Gaza and Ramallah,
political movements arranged other networking and social opportunities
for their own members.

“All of us are suffering,” he said. “But the independents are
suffering more.” His salary from the Ramallah-based Palestinian
Authority, he said, doesn’t even cover the taxes levied on his
family land in Tubas. “At least I am out of jail,” he added. “Although
I was expelled and miss my family, I am happy to be free. I look
forward to the day when all detainees are released.”

Abu Khaizaran has started a new life in internal exile. He has
married and is now awaiting the birth of his first child this month,
and studies and discusses a broad range of topics voraciously.

Like many freed detainees, he rarely misses weekly protests at
Gaza’s International
Committee of the Red Cross headquarters or other local events
supporting the prisoners’ movement. “I participate in all activities
concerning the issue of detainees,” he says. “When Mahmoud Sarsak
was hunger striking, I visited his family and presented them with a
trophy to show my solidarity. But these activities don’t do much to
solve the issue. Israel doesn’t believe in peaceful, political
struggle.”

Respect international law

One thing that can work, Abu Khaizaran believes, is international
pressure. “The world, and especially the Arab governments, must
pressure America and Europe,” he said. “Those within these countries
should do the same. These are the countries that can implement the
Geneva Conventions and other international laws in Palestine, and for
the benefit of Palestinian detainees. Israel has convinced many
countries to support its policies. It acts like it’s above
international law, and the international community allows it. But even
Israel cannot fabricate realities.”

And those realities, coupled with international support, can infuse
Palestinian resistance with strength, he said. “Israel cannot kill
three million people who come to pray inside al-Aqsa Mosque
[in Jerusalem] with flowers. If all the Arab people make a vow to God
to march through Egypt
and Jordan to
pray in al-Aqsa Mosque, Israel cannot stop them.

“I don’t oppose Israelis because of their religion. We want them to
have a place under the sun, as much as we are looking for one of our
own. But when Israel forces Palestinian out of their lands, how can we
live with them?

“My message to them is to stop the violence and fundamentalism
inside Israeli society. Israel is based on ethnic premises. They expel
Africans from Israel just because they are not Jews. And they have
treated us the same way.

“Of course Jews can stay in Palestine. We cannot chase them back out
— impossible! But an exclusive state in Palestine is unacceptable.
Palestinians have the right to return
to our lands, and we will.”

A year after Ahmad Saadat’s hunger strike, Israel continues to
refuse to allow three of his children to visit him (“Palestinian prisoners
in Israeli jails: the case of Ahmad Saadat,” Al Akbhar English,
9 September 2012).

“I cannot stress enough that families continue to be denied visits
with our imprisoned family members, and prisoners denied visitation and
education, with devastating impacts on the families of prisoners,” Abla
Saadat said. “One year later, it remains clear that only resistance
wins freedom for Palestinian prisoners and that the steadfastness,
struggle, courage and unity of our prisoners is a light and an
inspiration to the entire Palestinian nation and all people of
conscience.”

“As a human being, I don’t seek out enemies,” Abu Khaizaran said of
the struggle that brought him to Gaza. “When anyone is a human being,
he should treat you as a human. And the most important thing is that
the basis of our fight must be human.”

Joe Catron is a US activist in Gaza, Palestine. He works with
the Centre for Political and Development Studies and other Palestinian
groups and international solidarity networks, particularly in support
of the boycott, divestment and sanctions and prisoners’ movements. He
blogs at joecatron.wordpress.com
and can be followed on Twitter @jncatron.

Welcome To My World

About Me

DARCY D= YOU MUST BELIEVE.STANDING UP FOR THE INNOCENT C.E.O
The United Kingdom resident champions causes of the voiceless, the powerless and the weak, particularly in North America. She campaigns for petitions on behalf of incarcerated human trafficking.